LOGAN: Father and Son
by kenxepe
Summary: My wife recently had a miscarriage. We don't all heal from pain like Logan, but we have our own ways. Our own healing factor. My wife bakes. I write stories.


DISCLAIMER: I do not own Logan, and I make no money from this fan fiction.

LOGAN: Father and Son

by

Rhonnel Ferry

For the child my wife and I lost.

#

I'm the best there is at what I do. And apparently that includes getting my ass kicked! I see the punch coming. This guy's fist is so massive, it might as well be a Mack Truck barreling towards me. And just like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, I'm too petrified to get out of the way. My sorry hide is knocked all the way back into the cage fence.

They call him The Conqueror. A six foot three monster with 265 pounds of solid muscle. He's so damn strong, I'd swear he's a mutant. Except that would be impossible. There are no more mutants. Not in 25 years. I'm the last of my kind. Which wont be for much longer if I die in this fight.

He could finish me off now, easily. Pound me to mush right up against the cage. But the big oaf doesn't. Instead, he decides to play to the crowd, raising his large, muscular arms in premature victory. Big mistake. The bloodthirsty mob cheers him on. And I get the time I need to recover.

I launch myself forward, and hit him with a superman punch right in the middle of his chest! Then I follow up with three more punches to the breadbasket. Nothing. Like he doesn't even feel it. Which is no small feat, considering my knuckle bones are covered in the indestructible metal, Adamantium!

Then with a speed that belies his size, he front kicks me halfway across the mat, before deciding to fire up the crowd again.

Body blows aren't gonna do it. He's got way too much muscle. Might as well be armor. Gotta be a head-shot, but he's too goddamn tall. I don't get back up. I stay down on one knee, and wait for him to come to me.

Soon as he's close enough, right when he bends down to lock those enormous fingers around my throat, I spring upward, and hit him with an uppercut right under the chin! Takes everything I got. If this doesn't knock him out, I'm done. And mutants would be extinct.

He takes two wobbly steps backward. His eyeballs roll up into his head, and he collapses heavily in front of a stunned audience.

#

Rogue would be pissed if she ever found out that I had gone back to underground cage fighting. But a man's gotta make a living, and flipping burgers didn't work for me. Besides, how's she gonna know? She's dead. They all are.

The memory of losing her makes me grit my teeth. I knock back the whiskey, and Sal, the bartender, walks over to refill my glass.

"You'll need this, too," he says, handing me an ice pack.

I look at him sideways for being a wise-ass, but I gratefully accept the ice pack, and press it against the swelling on my forehead.

Sal is an old Filipino immigrant with dark skin, gray hair, and a walrus style mustache. He owns this dive. It's empty now. This place is almost always empty except when there's a cage match on.

"Your defense sucks," he bluntly tells me. "Your defense always sucks. Sometimes I wonder if you want to get punished or even killed in there for one reason or another."

"What are you, a psychiatrist now?"

"All part of the job. A bartender is both a psychiatrist and a priest in one."

Then it happens. You know how some people say they can smell trouble? Well, being a mutant, I actually have a heightened olfactory sense. But trouble isn't something I smell. It's more like something I feel. Now, this isn't anything like Petey's Spider-Sense. No, you get a feel for trouble with experience. And I have had plenty experience with trouble.

"Sal, down!" I yell just as the front door gets kicked in.

Two guys enter. One of them fires at Sal with a shotgun, and the bartender just barely manages to take cover behind the counter! I'm wide open at the stool. So the second guy shoots me down with his pistol!

Now, aside from heightened senses, I also have a mutant healing factor. It enables my body to heal injuries at an incredible rate! Granted, it's not as good as it used to be. Age will do that to ya. But it's still good enough to save me from a fatal bullet wound.

"Get the old man!" the guy with the shotgun barks.

They're after Sal. The punk with the pistol goes around the counter. I play possum. The other one checks on me, and pokes me in the back with the muzzle of his shotgun. That's when I spin, grab the gun's barrel, and point it away from me.

Then I pop out the claws. Three steel blades that come out through my fist! I stab him in the gut. He squeals and pulls the trigger, shredding the wooden floorboards next to me. I stab him again, and blood pours from his mouth! I kick his corpse away, then quickly get back on my feet.

His pal just fearfully stares back at me in total shock. I swing the claws, and rip his face off his skull. He falls, joining his friend on the floor.

"Sal?!" I call out, retracting the claws back into my forearm.

"I'm alright," he nervously answers, cautiously emerging from behind the bullet-ridden counter.

"Who the hell are these guys?!"

"See those gang colors? They're with the Nevermind Gang! Damn, that's my son Connor's gang!"

"Whoa, you have a son?! You never talked about him before."

"Logan, if you're son was a no good punk-ass gangbanger, you wouldn't be talking about him either."

He marches out from behind the bar, doesn't even bother removing his apron, picks up the pistol from the floor, and shoves the weapon into the waistband of his pants. He checks for the car keys in his pants pocket, then heads for the broken door.

"Hey, where you goin'?! Aren't you gonna call the cops?!"

"With an underground MMA cage in here? Hell, no! I'm gonna go to my son's apartment, let the little good for nothin' prick know about how his so called friends just tried to rob and kill his old man!"

Sal is obviously all shook up. No way I'm going to let him confront his gangster son in his condition.

"Hey!" I call after him. "Wait up! I'll go with you!"

#

"Little shit," Sal grumbles from behind the wheel of his Ford Econoline van. "Worked my ass off to come to America, and get him away from that kind of life. And what does my idiot son do? Joins up with the first Filipino street gang he finds."

His whole body is trembling with anger. I offered to drive, but he wouldn't have any of it.

"Hey, how about keeping your eyes on the road there ey, Sal?" I remind him nervously.

He ignores the reminder.

"You got kids, Logan?"

I answer somberly, "Yea. Well,...I did."

He looks at me, his rage momentarily replaced with sympathy.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Hell of a thing, that. A child should never die before the parent. It's unnatural. It's wrong."

I quietly nod in agreement.

#

Connor's dilapidated apartment building is the spitting image of the dump I shack my ass up these days! Comes with all the familiar accessories, too, like the overturned garbage cans, the drunk hobos, and the kids smoking weed. And of course, my personal favorite, the distinct aroma of piss and dead rats.

Sal furiously stomps up the stairs leading to his son's room on the top floor. I follow him up. Then I catch a whiff of several scents from inside.

"Sal, wait-!" I warn him, but I'm too late. He's already noisily hammering on the door with his fist.

"Connor!" he yells. "Open the goddamn door!"

"Dad, get outta here!" I hear a young man's frantic voice from the other side.

The door suddenly swings open. A large man (Not Sal's boy, I assume. This guy looks more like the love child of Godzilla and Kong.) grabs Sal by the collar, roughly pulls the old man inside, and throws him face first into the floor. Then the thug looks back outside, but he doesn't find anyone else. Probably because I'm hanging onto the ceiling by my claws. He goes back inside, and slams the door shut.

I drop back down. Gonna have to find a more scenic route into that apartment unit. I locate a window, slide up the lower sash, then climb outside and scale the wall towards the roof.

#

On my way up, as I stick my claws into the surface, and feel for footholds, I reminisce about how, in the old days, I would switch into a superhero costume before attempting anything like this. Would've probably gone with either the black leather or brown and tan spandex for camouflage purposes. Definitely not the bright yellow and blue outfit. How did we ever find the time to change into those goddamn things?

Perfect. Connor's apartment has a skylight. Any window would have sufficed, but this is better. Makes for a more dramatic entrance.

I take a peep. There are five people in the room, including Sal and Godzilla Kong. Sal's sprawled on the floor. The big oaf is guarding the door. There's a young man on his knees in front of Sal. I'm guessing that's Connor, given his resemblance to his father. He's got a black eye and bad bruises on both cheekbones. His hands are bound behind him with some duct tape. There are two guys standing behind him. One of them has a revolver pointed at the kid's head.

And the other is Jericho Lim, one of the Nevermind Gang's sub faction leaders. Yea, I know about him. Everybody in this stinking neighborhood does. This guy's into drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, larceny, arson,... Hell, if I was still a superhero, I woulda' taken this asshole out a long time ago.

With my enhanced hearing, I could hear their voices as clearly as if I was in the room with them.

"So you're Connor's old man," Lim begins. "How the hell are you still alive?"

"Take more than a couple of dumb street punks with guns to take me out," Sal defiantly answers.

Lim laughs. "Damn, Connor! Your old man's more badass than you!"

"Jericho, come one, man," Connor pleads. "Let the old man go. He don't know nothin'-"

"I know he don't know nothin'! That's not why I wanted him brought here! That's not why he's about to die a slow and horrible death! I'm sending a message to the next undercover cop they decide to send in!"

"Undercover cop?" Sal repeats in disbelief. "Connor, what...?"

I couldn't help but smile to myself.

"I'm sorry, Dad. I wanted to tell you," Connor confesses, tears running down his bruised cheeks. "You don't know how many times I wanted to tell you."

I position myself right above the guy with the gun. Should take him out first for obvious reasons. Then I jump up, and crash right through the skylight! On my way down, I pop out the claws, and sink the blades right into the top of the gunman's skull, killing him instantly!

Sal pulls out the pistol from his waistband, and fires at Lim!

Dammit, Sal! You didn't need to do that! I had this all under control!

The bullet hits Lim in the right side of his chest. He is thrown backward, and he howls in pain, but the son of a bitch still manages to pull out his own gun, and shoots Sal in the stomach!

I hear Connor scream. I discard my victim's carcass, swing the claws at Lim, and lop his entire forearm off! He shrieks wildly as blood erupts from the stump!

Godzilla Kong growls, and rushes straight at me. His heavy treads seem to shake the entire building! I scramble for Lim's gun, a Glock 17, and pry it from his severed hand. Then I shoot the angry giant! Twice on the right shoulder, once on the left! Doesn't even slow him down.

The monster tackles me off the ground! The wind is knocked out of me, but I still stab him several times in the back! He bulldozes me right through the frickin' wall!

We end up in the kitchen, both dazed. Thank God I recover first. I frantically search for the pistol. Can't find it. I settle for a chef's knife, and hurl it at the behemoth! He snarls! But I don't know if it's because of pain, or annoyance. He turns, and charges at me like a bull!

I sidestep the attack, and slash at his lower leg. His momentum plus the leg injury causes him to stumble, and he cracks his skull on the counter top!

I slump on the ground, trying to catch my breath.

Then the son of a bitch starts moving again!

He forces himself back on his feet slowly, the blood loss finally starting to get the better of him.

"Christ, it's like fighting The Hulk again," I say out loud.

Then my fingers accidentally find the grip of the handgun beneath some debris. I take it and aim, just as he turns around for another attack. Then I empty the entire magazine on him! Thirteen rounds in the stomach and chest!

I pull the trigger twice more, and the gun just responds with a pair of clicks. I dejectedly toss it aside. Then I grunt like the old man I am, as I push myself back up.

"Alright, bub," I tell him, the claws on both my fists ready. "Let's finish th-"

Before I could complete my sentence, he pitches forward, and stops moving.

#

"Dad!" I hear Connor worriedly cry, as I reenter the room from the gaping hole the giant and I made.

I pass by Jericho Lim. He's slumped against the wall, bleeding from both wounds Sal and I gave him. I consider stabbing him in the face, but I figure a slow death is more fitting, so I leave him there.

"Dad, talk to me!" Connor, his hands still bound, bends down to check on his father. "Dad, are you OK?!"

"Are you kidding me?" the old man answers weakly, as his life slips away. "My son's not a crook. This is the best I've felt in years."

EPILOGUE

I intentionally skip the wake, and most of the burial to avoid the crowds. As you may have guessed, I'm not much of a people person. Fortunately, Connor hasn't left by the time I get there.

"Logan!" he says in surprise when he sees me.

"Connor," I greet him back.

"Thanks for coming."

"Sure," I place a bottle of whiskey next to his father's gravestone. "I'm not a flower guy," I explain.

He laughs. "Neither was my dad."

"You look good out of your gang colors."

"Oh, I'm done with police work. If I was really any good at it, I wouldn't have gotten caught."

"So what're you gonna do now?"

"My dad left me the bar. So I guess you and I will be seein' a lot of each other."

"You kidding me? I'm there almost all the time. That place is like a second home."

"Yea, I guess you and my dad talked a lot. He ever mention me?"

I smile at him, and say, "All the time."

END


End file.
